Areas of Support
Graduate and Undergraduate Students
Funding
Offering student assistance in the form of fellowships and scholarships is a priority for the Sociology Department, which currently serves as the academic home for 80 graduate students and over 600 undergraduate majors.
Graduate Professional Development
The Department's graduate students come from every part of the United States and the world, including the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, Mexico, Chile, Turkey, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Israel, and many others. The Department places tremendous value on core training in sociological theory, methods, and statistics at the M.A. and Ph.D. levels, and builds on this core with a variety of course offerings and research areas such as criminology and deviance, demography, education, family, gender, health, politics and development, and race and ethnicity. Students research and publish alongside faculty in both mainstream and leading disciplinary outlets, and regularly present their work at national and international conferences, which would not be possible without the generous support of donors.
The Norval Glenn Prize
In 2011 the Department established The Norval Glenn Prize, in honor of Professor Emeritus Dr. Norval Glenn and his many contributions to the field of family sociology. Recipients receive a financial award for the best paper in the area of family sociology.
Undergraduate Program
The Department's undergraduate students also actively participate in research projects alongside faculty members, with the Sociology Honors Program and the Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) Sociology Honors Society serving as the core of upper-division student activity. Students have recently created and developed Sociological Insight, a national peer-reviewed journal of undergraduate sociological research. Undergraduate alumni go on to leading graduate programs and law schools around the country, or on to productive careers in federal, state and local governments, the private sector, and the non-profit sector.
Student success is our success, and with your generosity, we can support their endeavors in every possible way and continue to help them reach their full potential.
Faculty
Research
The Department's faculty members are extremely research-active, placing great value on not only disseminating social scientific knowledge but also producing such knowledge, from looking at how bullying in schools affects academic and economic success, to examining how religious institutions impact the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. Faculty regularly publish articles in the leading journals of the discipline and books in premier scholarly presses, and present at conferences throughout the country and internationally. The Sociology Department and the Population Research Center also house the Urban Ethnography Lab, which aims to forge strong ties between the fields of demography and ethnography. The faculty and research sections on the website provide a more in-depth look at the areas of specialization and research activity of a productive and diverse group of scholars.
Endowments
Faculty Chairs, Professorships, and Fellowships build the Department's reputation and demonstrate a further commitment to academic excellence. They promote a sense of tradition and provide the best faculty with the tools to maintain their productivity. In addition to providing year-round salary incentives for the most productive faculty, Chairs and Fellowships provide for support staff, research assistance, conference travel, and continuing education allowances.
Your generosity will help us support the efforts of faculty and help us recruit, retain, and reward the faculty excellence that increases our standing and benefits all members of our community.
For more information on gift categories, please visit the Office of Development's website, or e-mail changinglives@utexas.edu or call (512) 471-8861 and indicate you would like to make a gift to the Department of Sociology.
